Research On The Application Of Death Penalty

Having investigated the current situation of death penalty in a worldwide perspective, from a worldwide perspective, we cannot deny that it has become an international trend to abolish, or at least to strictly restrict, the death penalty. And examination of the application of death penalty in China has pointed to the indisputable fact that the scope of death penalty is overly broad, and the number of executions, overly great. Some scholars have suggested that death penalty be abolished immediately, but this is, I think, merely a fantasy of the idealist. The retention or abolition of death penalty is no simple legal issue; it is also a national concern intimately related to the circumstances of the country, and its people. Any country should not only respect the requirements of theories of penal treatment but also fully take into consideration the actual situation of the country. It is a common recognition that in China today death penalty cannot be abolished. Since death penalty cannot be abolished currently, a rational attitude is how to correctly apply it. Thus the application of death penalty has become a subject of study full of practical significance. A thorough study of the application of death penalty can provide a more scientific instruction for correctly applying death penalty, achieving judicial justice and preventing from wrong use of death penalty.Actually there had been increasing research on the subject , and it reached its climax especially after disclosure of many wrong cases, such as that of SHE Xianglin. There has been a profusion of insightful research on the theoretical basis of death penalty, but relatively less practical support. The deficiencies in the current research fall into three types:the approaches to the studies are faulty;the research and the judicial practice are not sufficiently integrated;and the research is not thorough, and therefore has proved not quite instructive to judicial practice.The application of death penalty has always been a matter of life and death. Consequently, both intensive and extensive research is urgently called...